Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed 81 people, including seven Yemenis and one Syrian convicted on different charges, including terrorism, espionage and murder, in the kingdom's biggest mass execution in decades, the Interior Ministry said. The number dwarfed the 67 executions reported there in all of 2021 and the 27 in 2020.
In a statement, the Saudi Interior Ministry said the convicts, most of them Saudi nationals, also included those who held "deviant beliefs," those who targeted places of worship and government buildings, and those who were "spying for terrorist organizations such as Houthis, al-Qaida and Daesh in Yemen."
The statement also mentioned names, nationalities and crimes committed by the defendants who were executed. However, the statement did not specify how the executions were carried out.
The men included 37 Saudi nationals who were found guilty in a single case for attempting to assassinate security officers and targeting police stations and convoys, the statement added. The mass execution is likely to bring back attention to Saudi Arabia's human rights record at a time when world powers have been focused on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Rights groups have accused Saudi Arabia of enforcing restrictive laws on political and religious expression and criticized it for using the death penalty, including for defendants arrested when they were minors.
"There are prisoners of conscience on Saudi death row, and others arrested as children or charged with nonviolent crimes," Soraya Bauwens, deputy director of anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, said in a statement.
"We fear for every one of them following this brutal display of impunity," she added.
Saudi Arabia denies accusations of human rights abuses and says it protects its national security through its laws.
Its state news agency, SPA, said on Saturday the men executed Saturday had the right to an attorney and were guaranteed their full rights under Saudi law during the judicial process.
The kingdom executed 63 people in one day in 1980, a year after militants seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, according to state media reports.
A total of 47 people, including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, were executed in one day in 2016.
'Violation of basic human rights, international law'
Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned Saudi Arabia's execution as a "violation of basic human rights principles and international law," Iranian state media reported Sunday.
"This inhumane act was in violation of basic principles of human rights and international law, and contrary to human principles and accepted legal procedures," a ministry spokesperson cited by state media.
Iran also decided to temporarily suspend its secret Baghdad-brokered talks aimed at defusing yearslong tensions with regional rival Saudi Arabia a day after Saudi mass execution.
According to a report issued by the United Nations expert on human rights in Iran in 2019, the previous year had seen increasing restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and continuing violations of the right to life, liberty and a fair trial in the country, including 253 reported executions of adults and children.
The report said that while the number of executions was the lowest since 2007, it "remains one of the highest in the world."